Wednesday, June 29, 2016

I Can See Clearly Now....: Douglas, You Need Glasses by Ged Adamson

A girl and her pooch out for a romp through the autumn woodland! How idyllic!

But there's a problem.

Douglas the dog seems to be a bit hard-of-seeing! He runs right by a smirking squirrel laughing on a tree trunk, earnestly in hot pursuit of a wind-driven leaf!

YOU SEE, DOUGLAS HAD ALWAYS BEEN A VERY NEAR-SIGHTED DOG.

Douglas doesn't do any better in town. He clomps straight through fresh concrete patching a sidewalk, oblivious of the sign that clearly reads WET CEMENT! He mistakes her hat, scarf, and coat hanging on the stairway banister post for Nancy herself. And one embarrassing day, he goes in the wrong house and is discovered eating from another dog's dish, clearly labeled BARNEY. Worst of all, when Nancy tosses a football into the trees for Douglas to fetch, he returns with a wasp nest trailing its angry residents in his mouth. Yipes!

This is serious. Something must be done.

So Nancy escorts Douglas downtown to a shop with a sign that says OPTICIAN, decorated by a big pair of glasses.

DOUGLAS SAID, "WHY ARE YOU TAKING ME TO A SHOE SHOP?"

Nancy leads her dog inside and introduces him to the eye doctor, and Douglas faces the eye chart exam. But this is not the usual chart with the big E on the top line. This one is just for dogs, with a big, black silhouette of a squirrel right on top, and a cat, car, bus, bone, and leaf in descending sizes.

"NOW, DOUGLAS," SAID THE DOC, "TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE!"

And when Douglas identifies the squirrel as a dinosaur and the leaf as a squirrel, the eye doctor's diagnosis is confirmed, and Douglas gets to pick out the glasses that he needs and pronounces them "amazing."

All's well that ends well, with Douglas bouncing home, happy with his new glasses, but still convinced that he's chasing squirrels blowing in the wind, in Ged Adamson's hilarious Douglas, You Need Glasses! (Schwartz and Wade, 2016). Ged Adamson's brief text plays straight man to his comic illustrations of Douglas' myopic mistakes. Adamson's woods, with trees with brightly colored trunks, and his cartoon-styled dogs and squirrels adds a light touch to this bit of bibliotherapy for what can be somewhat traumatic experience for kids for whom glasses are clearly a necessity. The author even ends his book with a double-page spread of photos picturing "Real Kids Who Wear Glasses!" As kids most of us feared being "different" from our peers in any way, and this funny dog tale offers empathy for kids who are a little phobic of the four-eyed phenomenon.

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Retired after 32+ years as an elementary librarian, I really miss the joy of bringing together the right book with the right reader at the right time. Loving both kids and books equally as I do, perhaps helping children and the adults who care about them find good books through this blog is the next best thing to being there.
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